


Something in the Heart

by norgbelulah



Series: Something Monstrous [3]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Double Life, M/M, Memory Alteration, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mindfuck, Season/Series 02, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 09:17:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boyd doesn't like it when Raylan's mind strays away from him.  But it's not like Raylan can help it.  </p>
<p>Things in Harlan are generally pretty fucked up these days, even more so when Carol Johnson comes to town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something in the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the usual betas. I wrote this before the holidays, but just now had the time to post it.

The woman's lips are on his before he can do or say much about it, and then they aren't anymore. It was a fast kiss, impulsive. Which is something Raylan rarely is or encounters much anymore. Carol Johnson's amber eyes have fire in them. She thinks she's already won.

"For luck," she murmurs and walks into the house.

Kyle, who'd come through and risen up fast just after Raylan had returned to Harlan is staring at him. 

Boyd's got a few boys around working for him in the mine, keeping an eye on things, and doing whatever needs to be done in the county. Kyle is probably the smartest of them, now that the kiss had smoothed out a few of his wrinkles. He's higher up than Devil these days and he loves Boyd almost as much as Raylan does.

And that's saying something.

Raylan scowls. "What?"

"He's gonna hear about that." Kyle's brows are still shot up, from the surprise.

"Well, he's gonna hear I didn't have anything to do with it," he growls. 

Raylan thinks Boyd will probably laugh. Probably. Or kill her. He might be planning on it anyway. He hasn't told Raylan and Raylan doesn't care to know.

Raylan watches the door shut behind her and works his jaw. He follows, thinking of Boyd's voice over the burner phone only two days before, when he'd called him to tell him about the woman.

Boyd said, "She's working for the mine. Got to be at the courthouse for a trial. She's got Kyle with her. For security. He don't know you today. You're gonna pretend the same."

A thrum of pleasure had run through Raylan that Boyd could trust him farther than he could Kyle to put up an act. He supposed he had more practice than the younger man, but Boyd's faith made him feel good anyway.

"Make yourself visible to her," Boyd said. "Attractive. I want you down here with her when she comes back tomorrow. I want you to bring her to me. When the time is right."

"Okay," Raylan said.

"She's bringing a firestorm, Raylan. We're going to bank that blaze."

Carol Johnson was a handful and trouble seemed to follow her around.

First, there was the trial, at which she, or her company anyway, was the defendant. Raylan was only involved in that far enough to check the security in the courtroom, but he sidled his way into her shit during the bomb scare, when he figured out Kirby Peener Jr. was outside with a sniper rifle.

He wasn't surprised she requested him to head down to Harlan with her. If she hadn't, he'd have gotten Art to assign him one way or the other.

He'd been down there a lot lately actually. Which was good for him, as it made Boyd happy to see him. 

It had all started with the girl, Loretta McCready. Raylan had angled his way onto a task force with Tom Bergen from the State Police, who wanted some help on things in Harlan. The first one had been a call to a sex offender's hotline, that Walt McCready thought was anonymous.

He was right to call, but wrong to clam up when he realized he was going to have to talk to the cops. When the pervert in question picked the girl up, it was just lucky they got to her in time. 

What wasn't so lucky was that Walt was tangled up in Mags Bennett's operation in some way Boyd either didn't know or didn't want to tell Raylan and when he went missing, the girl ended up at Mag's place while her daddy's checks were being cashed by some four-wheeling preacher man who called Raylan, 'Spawn of the Devil' and tazed him in the chest.

Boyd was pissed about that because everybody who knew about Boyd in Harlan knew to fear him, and by extension fear Raylan. Or should have at least known not to fucking assault him over government check cashing. Raylan heard, after the Staties got through with the man, after Raylan turned the tazer on his scrotum, Boyd sent some boys up to that mountain to put some more fear into him.

At that point it became clear shit was up with Walt and that Dickie and Coover Bennett, Mag's grown-ass idiot children, were behind it. Boyd still refused to help Raylan, citing a circumstance he'd been unaware of until that point.

"I told ol' Mags if you were down here, Raylan, she only had to cooperate with you if you were on my business. Not the government's."

Raylan frowned. Not liking it. "Why?" 

They were in Boyd's bed together in his room behind the altar of his rundown church. There were black curtains up in there too and even though it was dark, Boyd's eyes were shining. Raylan wanted the kiss, but he needed to think this through first. 

Boyd always said he wanted him in the Marshals. Raylan would have left in a heartbeat if Boyd hadn't insisted.

"She don't like you," Boyd said, smiling, like he thought that was crazy. "She's still mad about Dickie's knee."

"Shit, really?" Raylan guessed he should have known.

"And it would look bad. Her helping you out. I let her have her autonomy, baby. I got to let her maintain it, right?"

Raylan drew his hands across Boyd's cold skin. He needed what Raylan could give him. "Doesn't mean you can't help me, too," he grumbled.

"Boy, what makes you think I know?"

"You know everything." About Harlan anyway. Raylan knew Boyd had a man in Sheriff Doyle's office and probably one slinging weed for Dickie too.

Boyd kissed him. The soft kind, just with his lips. No teeth yet. 

"If I wasn't here, you wouldn't know any more than you do now, either, baby. Huh?"

"I guess not. It's just," he hedged, frowning again.

"What?" Boyd took Raylan's face between his hands. "Tell me."

Raylan had to. Wanted to. "The girl. Loretta. I feel--" He broke off. He felt something. "She shouldn't be there. With the people probably killed her Daddy."

"Okay," Boyd said patiently. "You want her here?"

Raylan didn't answer and Boyd didn't make him.

"You tell me what you decide," Boyd whispered and they moved on to other things.

He left Boyd twelve hours later, after only one kiss and a sound night's sleep, with a renewed sense of clarity, which was helpful when he went to go talk to the girl.

Raylan caught her before school. He handed her the phone he'd got for her. It was real similar to the one Boyd got for him. He told her he'd started something with the Bennetts, maybe wasn't going to end easy.

"Something Boyd Crowder can't pull you out of?" she'd asked him, eyes sharp. She was a tough little thing. Raylan really liked her.

Raylan had smirked in response. "Not as such. It's my own mess. I won't ask him for help," _again_ , he thought, "'less I need it." He tilted his head at her. "What do you know about Boyd Crowder?"

"Everybody knows about him," she shot back, stiffly. "Everybody knows about you too."

"And what do they know about me?"

She shook her head at him. "You go around, actin' like everything is normal. Everything is fine with you, but you don't see--all you see is _him_."

He didn't ask her how she'd come to that conclusion. He knew it was true, though in a foggy sort of way he'd long ago stopped trying to peer through. "It's better this way," he told her. Boyd's words, inside his head. They were comforting.

"Raylan, I really think it ain't," she whispered.

Raylan went back to his original point. "Take the phone and call me, you need help, or just come with me out of here. I can't take you to Lexington, but Boyd could keep you safe--"

She jerked away from him at that. "You're gonna pull me into his trap. He don't even want me or he'd've had me by now. He'll take me 'cause you want it. You don't even know what you want." She searched his eyes for something and he felt a pang when it became clear she didn't see it. "I wish I'd known you before," she said.

"Before what?"

She grabbed the phone from his hand and turned away.

Raylan didn't have time to go back and see Boyd again.

He didn't see Loretta again until yesterday afternoon, when Carol Johnson had dragged him into Mags' shop to try and talk her into selling her land to the mining company.

Raylan had scowled when he heard that's what she was after. But Boyd had sent him there. Boyd clearly had it in hand. He had Kyle still working for her, telling people all over the county that they should sign over their property and play as nice as possible.

Except Mags wasn't.

Raylan didn't know what to think of that. Mags was only around still because she'd struck a bargain with Boyd years ago, after he'd taken down Bo. 

Boyd's daddy had flipped his shit when he found out what Boyd had become. How it had happened. Maybe Boyd had wanted to share his power with Bo, but it wasn't to be when he realized how Boyd kept his men loyal. Bo organized a posse. Half of them perished, the other half work for Boyd now. Bo Crowder's body was never found.

Raylan heard about all of that from Johnny--who was just running the bar, and staying the hell away from Boyd--in the first few days he'd been back in Harlan, before it was common knowledge that Raylan belonged to Boyd. When Johnny figured it out, he said he wasn't welcome to drink in his place any longer. Raylan left off drinking for the most part after that anyway.

Raylan was on edge because he was being kept in the dark. He wasn't pissed. He wasn't. But Dickie Bennett was fencing with a baseball bat and Coover was staring at him like _he_ was the one going to turn around and bite somebody.

Carol was just about done not getting anything from Mags, so Raylan slid an icy glare from her boys straight to her eyes. He jutted his jaw and tapped his foot, once.

But Coover was already walking up on him. "Mags," Raylan said very slowly, "he lays a hand on me you are not gonna like what happens." 

He was just stating the facts. If he could've had his way, he and this beast of a man would have just thrown down then and there. It had been a while since he'd gone with anybody wasn't Dewey Crowe being an idiot. But Dewey Crowe wasn't going to hit back very hard either. Anybody marked up Raylan's face, Boyd was going to break all their fingers and scratch out their eyes. He'd said so once himself.

"Coover, you back the hell up right now," Mags snapped. "What in God's name are you thinking?"

"He's so smug," Coover spit. "Comin' up in here. Workin' for the man and for the--"

Raylan slapped his hand around Coover's dewy lips, snapping his head to the side and hip checking his body into the shelf. "Do not speak another word," he growled. "Or so help me, I will not be held responsible." He looked to Mags. "I better not see his face later," he told her.

"You won't. Now go on."

Raylan let go and Coover sprawled to the floor in a pile of canned soup and instant noodles. He grabbed Carol by the arm and hauled her out of there, but not before he saw Loretta standing in the doorway to the back room with a little furrow in her brow.

He saw her again just a few minutes ago, at Mags' big party, when he scared away some young punk, ready to stick it in her, even though she was only fourteen. She'd glared at him then and said she could take care of herself. He wondered if she could, in this place, with these kinds of people around her.

Raylan thought, briefly, dismissing it quickly, that even he hadn’t been able to do that.

Now, he walks into Mags’ living room behind Carol Johnson, who stops dead at the sight of Boyd on the sofa in front of her. Raylan flanks her, coming up just to her line of sight, behind the sofa, and at Boyd's left shoulder. Kyle follows him further into the room.

"I'm sorry," she says sweetly, she's a fabulous actress. "This is a private meeting. Why don't you head on outside and back to the party, son?"

A lot of people make that mistake when they meet Boyd for the first time. He doesn't look any older than twenty-four or five.

He smiles at her and says, "Oh, I'm very much a part of this meeting too, Miss Johnson."

She squints at him, cocking her hip, trying to maintain her veneer of friendliness. "I saw you before," she said. "You were at the meeting last night."

Boyd nods.

He'd been at the back, in the shadows. Everyone knew he was there. There was a hush over the crowd and only those who had something prepared to say seemed interested in speaking. But all hell broke loose when the firecrackers went off. After that, Boyd was gone.

"But you don't have a stake in these proceedings. You're not a property owner. Not any of the lands I want anyway." She's beginning to get impatient. "Raylan," she says, clearly expecting him to do something. "I ain't sure why you followed me in here, but you sure can escort this man out."

Raylan says nothing. It's easy to maintain silence, calm, when Boyd is close to him. If he needs to speak, Boyd will say so.

"He ain't gonna be doing that, Miss Johnson," Boyd says softly, and it's easy now to detect a hint of menace in his tone. Mags shivers from her seat in an old armchair and Carol's looking a little startled now.

"Why not?" She's replacing fear with anger.

"Anybody care to say?" Boyd always finds the reveal amusing. Raylan picks up on his smile.

"They're his dogs, woman," Mags snaps. "That one is too," she adds, thrusting a thumb at Kyle who's leaning against the wall near the window, smiling too. "And all them boys outside. 'Cept for mine."

"What the hell does that mean?" Her voice is going a little shrill. She's taken in their silence, their echo of Boyd's expression.

"It means they ain't gonna let you leave until you give them what they want. What he wants, actually," she says dismissively. "They don't want anything. Not really."

Boyd laughs and it thrums down Raylan's spine. "You know me so well, Mags."

She glares at him.

It feels like the temperature in the room has dropped a few degrees, and Carol's adrenaline must have spiked because Boyd moves suddenly, spooking her, and she turns, sprinting for the door.

"Raylan," Boyd barks, but Raylan is already moving. He grabs her around the waist and hauls her back into the center of the room.

"Givens," she spits. "I'm gonna report you to Internal Affairs. I'm gonna get you and your whole office and all the offices in this fucking state fired. Jesus H.--"

"Calm down," Boyd says to her, catching her eye. 

She sags almost instantly, but her breath catches in her throat. 

"Shit," she whispers. "What did you do? That's not--"

Boyd grins. "Say it, Raylan. It's my favorite."

Raylan takes pleasure in the words because Boyd does. "Boyd's a monster," he breathes in her ear.

“What does he want?” she asks desperately. She believes. Raylan doesn’t think anyone could look in Boyd’s eyes like she is and not believe those words.

“You thought we got you all those signatures, just ‘cause you asked,” Boyd says, his eyes dancing in triumph. “You thought you were just here to buy out Mags. What’s another million or two, huh?”

She’s not trying to escape, but her breaths are coming fast. She’s panicking, terrified. “What did you do?”

“Nothing yet,” Boyd replies. “Oh, we got all those signatures, sure. We just needed a hold out. To get the price high, to get you where we needed you to be. Can’t have everything go smooth. Can’t have any questions, can we? No, it’s what I’m going to do that you should be worried about, ma’am.” He adds on the honorific with an ironic smirk. “Raylan, tell her what it is I do.”

“Boyd changes people,” Raylan says. She stiffens in his arms. 

He catches Kyle’s eye. 

Raylan remembers how he changed Kyle. Raylan was there.

He'd been in town for the weekend to see Boyd, when they were interrupted by Kevin, a man who kept his eyes and his ears open for Boyd in the mine.

Boyd was in a glorious mood, grinning wide and sweet at his messenger boy as he untangled himself from Raylan's buzzing limbs. He propped himself up on his elbows at the foot of his bed and beckoned poor Kevin closer. He brought him close enough to kiss, just with his lips, lightly on both cheeks.

"What is it, sweet boy?" he asked.

Kevin had been clearly terrified Boyd would be angry for interrupting them. But he swallowed his fear, and smiled because Boyd wanted him to. 

Boyd told Raylan before then that the boys in the mine and the girls at Audrey's only get his sharp kiss every once in a while. They listen and they watch so whatever they tell Boyd they heard or saw might win them another. They don't love him quite like Raylan does, or Devil or Dewey even. They fear him and they want him. They want more of him than they can ever have.

Kevin told Boyd somebody at the mine was quietly feeling out a robbery. Looking for people who'd be tough enough to handle a heist, to point a gun, to shoot it. To not care if others got hurt. 

They hadn't had many takers. Everyone from Harlan knew you didn't plan a job without asking Boyd, or him telling you to do it. But this person wasn't from Harlan.

Boyd kissed Kevin, taking a lot from him and letting him curl into a little ball of hazy pleasure at the foot of the bed, then turned to Raylan. "I'm gonna go check this out. I'd like you to come with me."

Boyd had kissed him a few hours ago and they'd spent his comedown fucking like rabbits. Raylan blinked at him, still reeling a little, but he pulled himself together and went, because it was what Boyd wanted.

The troublemaker's name was Kyle Easterly.

They found him at the puddle.

There was a hush in the room when Boyd walked in. Ava was behind the bar. Raylan had only half wondered what she was doing now. She beamed at Boyd, leaning across the bar top to let him speak quietly in her ear. She closed her eyes up tight, like he was breathing life into her, but she nodded a moment later and surreptitiously pointed down the bar to a young-ish man, maybe close to one or the other side of thirty. 

Boyd nodded and told her, leaning away, "Thanks, honey. Now, why don't you fix Raylan something nice to drink."

She pulled down the Blanton's for him, beaming all the while, until she had to scowl at some of the girls who'd come walking up to see if Boyd wanted any of them. Boyd kept his eyes on Kyle, who was staring so hard into his drink, something with coke in it, he didn't seem to notice the hubbub.

"Raylan, I'd like you to clear everybody out of here," Boyd said, and the people who were within earshot began to stand, collect their shit, and down their drinks, without having to be told twice.

There were a couple people in the place who didn't know what was up, who made a stink and caught Kyle's attention. By the time Raylan booted the last of the drunks, Boyd was standing directly in front of Kyle, who remained at the bar, preventing him from leaving too.

"Leave the bottle, honey," Boyd instructed. "Lay out another glass for my new friend here, and go on. I'll come see you soon." His voice was real pretty right then, and Raylan, whose head was still fuzzy from the tender bite at his neck, exposed by his open collared shirt, had to shake himself slightly to clear it.

Ava touched his arm and they smiled at each other--Raylan held onto warm feelings for her because she'd been there when Boyd kissed him the first time--before she glided out of the room.

"Raylan, pour one for Kyle here," Boyd said. Raylan moved deliberately, in accordance with the tempo of Boyd's voice. He'd set a pace to this particular dance and Raylan knew to match it.

Kyle scowled at him. "You must be pretty important," he said. "Get everybody out of here just to talk to me. Already know my name. And you got," he paused, peering at Raylan as he came close enough to hand him the drink, "some kind of lawman, at least, along with you."

Raylan was ready to introduce himself, but Boyd didn't tell him to, so he kept his mouth shut.

"You're very perceptive, Kyle Easterly," Boyd said with half a smile. "I wonder that you hadn't yet heard of me."

"Who are you?" Kyle asked, raising his glass to his lips. He was looking in Boyd's eyes, but Boyd hadn't made his decision yet. He didn't seem affected.

Boyd smiled enigmatically. "Do you think of yourself as a brave man or a stupid one, Kyle?" he returned. "Got to be one or the other to work a mine, to recruit men to rob that mine, to do it behind the backs of men who control this county. You're from where?"

Kyle's eyes widened then, and his body grew stiff. Boyd was going to make him say. He didn't want to. "Pikeville."

"You wanted out from under somebody's thumb there, didn't you? What made you think Harlan would be a place wasn't gonna have someone watching out for men like you?"

Kyle's voice was strangled. He was staring right into Boyd's eyes. "I didn't think I'd be here long enough for that to matter."

"What was your play?"

"I got a friend on the armored truck, takes the money off the mountain. I can get the truck out of commission a couple days in a row, over a weekend. Triple delivery maybe. We'd set up a detonation near end of shift, pull out early, say someone got sick. Hit the trailer fast, explode the device on our way down the mountain."

"That's a good plan, Kyle. Smart." Boyd inclined his head. He looked deliberately away and to Raylan, who was standing at his right hand. "Ask him some questions, if you got any, baby."

Kyle frowned at the endearment, and he downed the drink Raylan had given him, quickly. "Wh--"

"Hush," Boyd snapped at him, stepping forward and catching Kyle's chin in his hand, forcing his eyes up.

"You were gonna blow up half the mine," Raylan said slowly, gathering his thoughts. "What about the men inside?"

"Most would've been out, in the lockers, on their way home."

"'Cept the night crew."

"Yeah. Collateral damage." Kyle's was starting to loosen up. He wasn't just caught by Boyd's eyes at that point, he'd been sucked in. 

"For what?" Boyd whispered.

Kyle smiled then, at him, but frowned immediately after, like he didn't know what was wrong with him. Raylan vaguely remembered that feeling. He felt a sudden rush of warmth for this boy. 

"Make some money," he said. "Fuck the company in the ass, 'stead of the other way 'round." He sounded drunk. Maybe he was, on booze and Boyd.

"What were you gonna do with that money?"

Kyle shrugged. "I dunno. Get out. Far away. Get some pussy. Somethin'."

"Oh my," Boyd smiled at him then like he was some kind of lost puppy. "You're just wasted potential, boy. A blank canvas, a pile of clay. What could you be if you were working for something?"

Kyle frowned, shaking his head. "Work for the mine. Work for the money--"

"But why do you want it? What is it that you want, son? Do you know? You want money? You want notoriety? Power? You want to hate on, step on people, so you can feel better about your shitty life? That ain't no way to live, is it Raylan?"

"No, it ain't, Boyd," Raylan wove his own voice, unthinking, into the weft of Boyd's words. 

"I can show you a better way, Kyle," Boyd finished.

Kyle was leaning forward now, eyes heavy, smile not wide, but deep. "You got real pretty, real fast," he murmured.

Boyd chuckled, delighted. "Now, mark it, Raylan," he said softly, drawing his hands up on either side of Kyle's face. "Anybody can get a kiss, can want another and another, can do whatever they can to get it. Not everybody blooms like this. I could snap his neck right now, he'd welcome it. I could slice his throat open, take my fill. He'd die smiling. But, he's a rare thing. He don't know, but he's been looking for me. For someone like me."

Kyle grabbed at Boyd's arms, clumsy, confused, still desperate. He was afraid, deep underneath his desire. Raylan remembered that feeling too.

"I'm going to change your life, Kyle," Boyd whispered, leaning close.

"Please," Kyle moaned, though Raylan thought he didn't really know what he was begging for.

Boyd ripped open the snaps on Kyle's coveralls and pushed the shoulders down and off him. Kyle pulled his hands free himself, still clumsy with too much anticipation. Boyd stilled them, holding his wrists together like handcuffs, and sunk his teeth into the soft tissue of Kyle's neck, just above his collarbone.

Kyle bucked once, coming too like Raylan had. Boyd pulled away, lapping once at the kiss, so it didn't bleed. His kisses never bled more than he wanted them to. Raylan looked at it, mesmerized until Boyd called his name.

"Help me take him home," Boyd said.

Raylan drove while Boyd sat in the back, running sharp fingernails through Kyle's hair, and listening to him spill out his life story. It seemed like something he needed to do, and Boyd indulged him, making noises indicating that he was listening, and understood. 

Raylan supposed Boyd and he never did that because they already knew each other so well. He wondered what a shock it would be to feel so much all at once for someone you'd never laid eyes on before.

Kyle's was a normal coal country tale, full of too much booze and not enough food growing up, intimidating uncles and cousins, distant parents, no other future than the mine in his path, and no way to learn how to be anything but tough and angry and always grasping.

Kyle clung to Boyd, begging, "Do it again. It feels so good."

Boyd laughed. "In a little while, sweet boy," he said.

When they got back, everyone was gone or asleep. Only a few of Boyd's boys ever stayed at the church. Most of them had homes they stayed in unless Boyd wanted them for something. 

Boyd and Raylan slung Kyle's arms across their shoulders as they walked inside. Kyle stuck his face into the crook of Boyd's neck. "I love you. Why do I love you so much?" he whined.

Raylan looked sideways at Boyd at that. "I told you, Raylan," Boyd said, ignoring the boy for a moment, "It wasn't the same for you. Not quite. He's got a little ways to go. But we'll get there, huh?" He turned his head to smile down at Kyle. "Soon, darlin'."

When they dropped him on the bed, they saw that all the jostling had opened up Kyle's first kiss and a slow trickle of blood was making its way down his neck. Boyd's eyes turned red fast and his teeth sharpened so quick they made a noise. Raylan had to sit down, his eyes riveted on Boyd, his cock hard and hurting.

"What are you?" Kyle asked, awed, but no longer frightened.

"Raylan?" Boyd asked, getting busy removing Kyle's clothing with a single-mindedness that made Raylan have to resist touching himself.

The words fell from his mouth in a low tone, full of excitement. "He's a monster." Raylan loved him.

"What's your name?" Kyle asked, slowly grinning. Boyd was touching him, sliding cold hands across his skin. Kyle was flushed, his cock straining hard. 

Boyd kissed him again, the sharp kind, before he answered, this time at the muscle about his hip as he pumped his cock just three times and he came again. Boyd lifted his head, letting the blood trickle and Raylan gazed at him, caught up in the heat, the intensity of the air in the room. He was stroking himself.

"My name is Boyd Crowder," he said through bloody teeth. "And I'm going to remake you."

They spent the rest of the weekend, all three of them, together. Kyle woke up from a deep sleep after that with eyes as wide as a boy's and a sweet smile that made him look years younger. His expressions were mercurial and joyous, and though they'd just met--because Boyd had touched him first, had claimed him--Raylan didn't feel his usual reluctance to be physical.

He felt strange about that at first, but Boyd was there, and he smoothed it all out, watching as they touched each other. 

"I ain't never been with no man before," Kyle whispered to Raylan, though his eyes were on Boyd.

Raylan smiled and when Boyd nodded, he was the one who answered. "Me either, darlin'," he'd said, though he never called him by any endearment after those few days, "not before Boyd. But isn't that better?"

All the reservations hiding in Kyle's eyes fled at that and he nodded eagerly. Raylan kissed him quick. He'd long ago abandoned any problems with the way he loved Boyd. He knew Kyle would too.

The case wasn't exactly the same for some of the other boys Boyd kept around him.

Dewey Crowe, for instance, couldn't shut up about how much he hated faggots. He had very specific ideas about what such people were like, and never hesitated to share them, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not.

Raylan, who, generally tried to avoid the boy at all costs, hit him in the mouth once, for spouting off on it. Kyle had been looking on, eyes dark and angry, but either unwilling or unable to do something. Raylan didn't care, he wasn't around enough to worry what those boys thought of him, his place with Boyd was secure. 

He hit him hard and without warning.

Dewey had looked up at him from the floor, shocked. “Boyd doesn’t care we talk shit about fags,” he said. Raylan thought sometimes all those bites had scrambled that boy’s brains even more than they already were.

“What about what he gets up to with you?” Raylan asked. He knew Boyd took it from everybody. It’s part of his...thing. This thing he was now.

“That’s...that’s different.”

Raylan snorted. “Well, I fucking care, asshole,” he said and was about to hit him again, feeling too pissed to let it go at just one blow.

“Raylan.” Boyd’s voice had rung out then from the doorway to his room, which was behind the broken altar.

Raylan went to him, scowl melting when he looked in Boyd’s eyes. They always calmed him down. He didn't think to look back at Kyle.

He looks at him now, and thinks briefly how strange it was to interact with him the other day in Lexington, when there was no sense of recognition in him, no indication in his actions or demeanor that Kyle had ever met him before. 

Raylan was good now at making everything seem normal on the surface, so he'd smiled and shook hands, and he'd politely declined Kyle's smirking offer of help with Raylan's search in the courtroom. But underneath, he was rattled. He knew Boyd tells some of the boys things, tells them to forget, to remember, to play a part that maybe they couldn't otherwise, but Raylan had never seen it before.

It made Raylan wonder if Boyd told him to forget anything so completely. He didn't like that uncertainty. He didn't like that he was thinking about it that way, or that he wouldn't have time to be with Boyd anytime soon with this woman hanging around the county, causing trouble.

The next day, when they met up at Helen and Arlo's place, Kyle knew him again, not just remembered him from the courthouse. He knew him from before. He smiled for real, and when they caught a moment alone together he murmured, "That was weird, huh?"

Raylan had just shaken his head. Not wanting to talk about it.

Later he said, "You've got to talk to them, man," as he crushed out his cigarette on the porch railing. Raylan eyed him and he looked a little shame-faced as he tossed the butt away. "She can't get them to sign and I can't go to Boyd and say they won't follow on this. He won't like it."

Raylan frowned. No, he wouldn't.

He didn't like talking to Helen these days, Kyle knew that. Boyd told him to avoid her if he didn't like it. So he did. He was in Harlan all the time, but he hadn't been to the house in months. Not since Helen had looked at him so sad, had tried to touch his face--he barely liked to be touched by anyone but Boyd these days--and had invoked his mother's name.

"Frances would have cried herself to sleep, every night," Helen said. "You're a slave to the Devil, boy."

Raylan didn't like to think about it. He liked Boyd's words, "It's better this way," he knew they were true, but Helen's eyes that day made him stop and say something he only thinks when it's been too long since Boyd kissed him. "What was I going to do to get away?"

"I don't know, Raylan." There were tears in her eyes. "I don't know."

After that episode, Raylan called Boyd on the phone and said, "I need you." He took two days off work and stayed with him until his head stopped its rubber band thrum and all he knew was that Boyd loved him.

Yesterday, he didn't have time for that. But still, he went inside his father's house. Carol Johnson was pushing papers at Helen with increasing frustration. Raylan approached quietly and when Arlo looked up, he flinched. "Give us a minute," he said to Carol. She threw him a weird look, but didn't argue. His expression was too serious.

"T-this what _he_ wants?" Arlo asked in a mumble after she'd gone.

"Kyle's here, ain't he?" Raylan said. "So am I."

Helen rose from her seat, anger in her expression and her stance. "If he expects we're just gonna sign over this land, our _home_ , Raylan--"

"He doesn't," Raylan told her calmly. "He expects you to trust him."

"No, that's what he expects _you_ to do. All he wants from us is obedience."

Raylan rolled his eyes then and Helen stared at him. "Helen, if all he wanted was that," he paused to roll up his sleeve where the puffy pink scar of a kiss had been left on his forearm, "you'd have at least one of these and you wouldn't give a damn either way."

"Like you," she spat, clearly horrified as she stared at the kiss.

"Exactly like me." Raylan spared a glance to Arlo, who was staring too, but also reaching for the papers. "Don't worry," he told Helen, smiling softly. "He's going to take care of it. Hasn't he always taken care of Harlan?"

Helen didn't have anything to say to that.

Raylan stepped back outside and said to Carol, "They agreed." She rushed back inside without even a "thank you" and Raylan started walking towards the car, trying to shake something he didn't want to admit was riding him.

Kyle followed. "Hey," he called. "Hey, man."

Raylan rounded on him. "What? I did what you asked. That ain't my job. It's yours and I did it, all right?"

"I know," Kyle said. "Thank you." He paused for a beat, then said, hesitating, "Listen, I just..."

"Spit it out," Raylan growled. "You ain't gonna hurt my delicate sensibilities."

Kyle made a face and bit the bullet. "You know, for all he don't say, he hates it when you stray like this."

"You think I _want_ to?" Raylan snarled. He ground his teeth. Disappointing Boyd was the last thing he wanted to think about. 

Boyd was always real careful to make it seem okay, good even, that Raylan couldn't stop himself from doubting, from pulling away when they'd been apart for too long. He said it meant Raylan was, "strong enough." 

For what, Raylan had no idea. By the time Boyd spoke so many words to him he was long back inside the fold, usually lost deep in his dark, red eyes.

"No," Kyle said patiently, stepping into Raylan's space. "And I know that wasn't easy for you, so I'll say thanks again."

"I did it for Boyd," Raylan insisted, scowling, not sure why he needed to be so contrary.

"That's good," Kyle answered softly. "It'll be a strange day you do anything for me you ain't doing for Boyd too. You got to stop this, Raylan."

Raylan didn't like to think the wound he felt in his chest was echoed across his face. "You don't know what it's like," he said, voice pitching more desperate than he'd wanted. "You're always with him."

"Not yesterday," Kyle said calmly, almost kindly. "Not today."

"You don't have to-to _pretend_ he's not with you. They ask me, Kyle, I'll have to lie through my teeth. I'll have to deny him. I have to be able to do that."

Kyle smiled at him, nodding. "I know, but that's not happening right now. Your people don't know shit about him, don't care either. What you have to do, Raylan, is _stop thinking so hard_." 

As he spoke he drew his fingers across Raylan's neck, over his collar and shirt, but just on the spot where he knew Raylan's kiss was.

The shock of the touch, by another hand in particular, sent a jolt of both fear, a somehow animal reaction of being exposed, open to attack, and desire, the way his body always reacted to pressure on the kiss, the old one, running all through him. Raylan stifled a moan, and his eyes slid shut. " _Shit_ ," he said.

He pulled Kyle to him, fast, unyielding, and crushed their mouths together. He bit Kyle's lip, then forced their tongues together, biting that too a moment later, so hard Kyle jerked back, eyes wide, and panting.

"Shit," he echoed, clearly startled.

He tried to pull further away, but Raylan wouldn't let him. He caught his hand again and pressed it back against the kiss, so Kyle was palming it. He'd been thrumming then, as if Boyd were there between them. He smiled and closed his eyes again. Just feeling it. 

Kyle huffed. He kept his hand still but Raylan felt him angle his body, crane to turn around and glance at the house. The coast must have still been clear. "Better?"

"Yeah," Raylan managed.

"That's funny," Kyle mused softly, while Raylan kept his eyes shut and soaked the feeling in some more. "Usually it just makes me feel...good. Not..." He trailed off.

Raylan didn't respond immediately. A few moments before he might have tried to come up with a theory. At that point, he only said, "Don't think too much about it."

Kyle gazes back at Raylan steadily and his smile softens, like he's thinking about some of the same things. Boyd moves then, kneeling down in front of Carol and reaching behind her head to grab a fistful of her hair.

"You don't have to stay for this, Mags," Boyd says. Raylan's eyes are back on him. His teeth are sharp now.

"I shook hands with you, Boyd Crowder," Mags answers stubbornly. "I'll see it through."

Boyd leans in close to Carol, who is holding her breath, terror-struck. He flicks his eyes up to Raylan’s, “Mark it,” he says and kisses her, the sharp kind, just at the base of her skull, behind her ear.

Raylan lets her go. She stays still under Boyd’s hold.

She doesn’t moan. Her breath hitches, gasping, and after a moment she raises a hand to cling to his shirt, scrabbling for purchase in the smooth fabric. Raylan can’t see her face. He’s watching Boyd, whose eyes are closed, until he pulls back and laps once at the kiss, stopping her blood. 

She keens and tries to pull him close again. Raylan takes a step back, looking down and watching them both.

He looks at Raylan again, but only briefly, with very red eyes, before he draws his hands up to smooth away Carol’s tears. “All right, all right, darlin’,” he says very softly. She’s staring at him with equal parts love and fear, but she hasn’t spoken yet. Raylan thinks she might not be able to in that moment. “You liked that, did you?”

She nods, eyes wide but smile loose and pretty.

Boyd smiles back at her, like she’s being cute. Maybe he thinks she is. Boyd told him once he loves everyone he kisses, at least a little. He has to or it won’t work. Raylan doesn’t know what won’t or why, but he thought it was lovely at the time.

“Say, ‘yes,’ darlin’,” he tells her.

“Oh,” she says, as though she’s surprised to hear her own voice. “ _Yes_.”

“Wonderful,” Boyd says, raising his fingers to card through her hair. She blinks slowly, soaking him in, tilting her head just slightly. She looks around the room, blinking, taking things in as though everything looks different. Raylan thinks it must. Her whole world’s been changed. “You want me to do it again?”

She nods, more vigorously than before, and adds belatedly, “Yes...please.”

“That’s good,” Boyd tells her, drawing out the words until she sighs. “I want to, honey, I do. But, I need you to do somethin’ for me first. Do you think you can?”

“Mmhmm,” she says. She blinks then and says, as though it’s just occurred to her, “I want to.”

“Lovely,” Boyd says, and as she tries to move closer to him, Boyd turns her towards the low coffee table at the center of the room, motioning to the papers that are set out in neat lines all across it, along with a map of Harlan. “I need you to fix these contracts for me,” he says. “Make them better.”

She looks at them at first like she doesn’t know what they are, let alone what Boyd means, but gradually, she smiles. She touches one softly. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. O-of course.” She lifts her eyes to Boyd’s then swings them back down to the table. “Make them better.”

As Boyd leans forward, letting his hand linger at the small of her back, he explains what he wants. Carol listens raptly, nodding, at first with a frown of uncertainty, and then with a blissful smile as he draws the pad of his thumb over his kiss and he says, “Everyone gets paid and the mountain is safe. Now ain’t that a fair sight better?”

She nods again. “Oh, yes.”

Raylan looks at Boyd’s thumb on the kiss and remembers that Boyd told him to note it. He thinks, a sudden epiphany, that Boyd doesn’t need to change Carol’s heart, or even that much of her life. She’s still got to go back to her company, make sure these changes stick. Boyd only has to change her mind.

Raylan thinks, he’s going to kiss her there again. And then he wonders why Boyd never kissed Raylan there. Wouldn’t that fix the way he’s always straying?

Raylan slides his gaze away from Carol’s fresh kiss, and wishes he hadn’t when he meets Mags’ eyes instead.

She looks shaken, white, and slightly sweaty. She shakes her head slowly at him, her eyes burning with banked anger, horror. She looks at Boyd who is watching Carol read over one of the contracts, her eyes intently focused. “You disgust me,” she growls.

Boyd’s eyes dance in her direction. He doesn’t answer.

Mags looks again at Raylan. She lifts her chin and speaks as if he isn’t there, “I know this boy’s kin. I know his mettle. You think I _don’t_ know what Dickie did to him, caused him to crack open his kneecap? I would have done it myself, he broke Helen’s truce. I know, Boyd Crowder, he would _never_ stand for such a display as this.”

Boyd looks back at her calmly. “You’re right,” he says. His voice is even, almost friendly. “I know perfectly well what he would have, Mags. That’s why he’s mine now, so he doesn’t. This is what I am, so I made him love it, so he wouldn’t destroy it. Certainly, I am self-serving, but you must see that I love him too. I always did and he knows that. It’s how I keep him.”

Boyd hasn’t looked at Raylan, but Raylan is looking at Boyd. He’s strayed too far in the past few days to hear this and not think, not doubt.

He breathes, “Fuck--” 

And is interrupted by Carol Johnson saying, “I need my laptop,” and looking up at Boyd intently. “To make them better.”

“Kyle, go get it,” Boyd barks.

He turns back to Mags, looking her up and down. He seems to be considering something, and a moment later, he speaks. “What about you? Seems to me, I ain’t the only thing ‘round here doing evil to people. Fucked up evil too.”

“What are you talking about?” Mags eyes have gone wide. Her voice is strong, but Boyd is looking hard at her and she’s frightened.

“Raylan, go get that girl. Loretta.” 

Raylan balks. He doesn’t mean to, but somehow, he can’t move. His heart beats faster. He’s afraid now too. Boyd’s eyes swing over to him and Raylan tries to avoid them. He does. He doesn’t understand why.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Boyd murmurs, standing swiftly. “This is lovely, baby, but not right now.” He touches Raylan’s face, grips his chin unyielding. Raylan looks at him, meets his eyes. “I know you didn’t like those things I said, Raylan, but I need you right now. You hear me?”

Raylan nods. He’s staring now into Boyd’s eyes, still tinged red, and so dark, but he doesn’t feel himself falling. 

“You need a kiss, Raylan. I know. But you can wait, can’t you?” His hand is resting on Raylan’s hip, but Raylan doesn’t move closer. He’s thinking, this is how Boyd keeps him. He doesn’t--does he want that?

“Raylan,” Boyd says, voice hardening, “you go get her and I’ll let her choose, like I was gonna let you choose for her. You make me send someone else and I’ll take her just to spite you.”

Raylan goes.

He meets Kyle out on the porch, laptop fetched from the car cradled in his arms. “Hey,” he says, purposefully bumping into Raylan gently. “What are you doing?”

Raylan shakes his head, looking down. He presses a hand to his suddenly aching head. “He told me to get the girl--”

“No,” Kyle says. “You gotta stop. Stop thinking.”

Raylan looks up at Kyle then and doesn’t see the concern, the camaraderie, there that he saw earlier at Helen’s, or the love and devotion Kyle thinks he has for Boyd. He sees what he’d just seen in Carol Johnson’s eyes--a terrifying blank. 

_They don’t want anything_ , Mags had said. _Not really_.

Raylan shudders and backs up a step. “Don’t talk to me.”

He wonders, fears, that’s what he looks like to Mags, to Helen when he’s forced to call. He longs for the blissful ignorance of even earlier that day. He wants the kiss again, desperately, and he hates that, hates himself.

He wants things to be easy.

Loretta’s eating fruit salad under a tree near the gravel driveway. She looks up and stands, dropping her nearly empty plate on the ground. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

Raylan blinks at her and rubs his head again. “He wants you.”

Her eyes dart to the cars. “Let me--”

“ _No_ ,” he grinds out. “He’ll find you. This way, he might--” he breaks off. “He’s going to let you choose.” Boyd’s words still feel better than his own thoughts in his mouth. Maybe he isn’t lost--but doesn’t he want to be?

“What’s wrong with you?”

He pulls her by the arm and starts walking back up to the house.

“Y-you can’t trust me when we’re in there,” he tells her.

“I don’t trust you,” she says quickly.

Raylan closes his eyes, somehow still wounded. “Good. Don’t trust anyone.”

She hauls back on his grip and stops walking. He turns to her, glancing around. He catches so much notice in Harlan these days. He’s suddenly filled with terror over what these people think of him.

“You’ve got your eyes on more than him right now,” she says, almost awe-struck. “What happened?”

“It won’t last,” he leans forward to hiss at her. “It can’t.”

“Then let’s run now,” she shoots back. “Raylan--”

For a wild moment, Raylan wants to, he’s so scared. Then he blinks and speaks words he knows in his bones, “Boyd will find us. He won’t let you go after that. Won’t let me--he’ll find us.”

He drags her up the stairs and into the house. He can save her.

They parked Carol in the corner with the table full of paper, happily plucking away at her keys. Boyd is standing on Mags' right side and she looks terrified sitting next to him.

“Hello, Loretta,” Boyd says with an enigmatic smile that Raylan can only appreciate intellectually.

“Hey,” she says, letting her eyes wander cautiously across the room before letting them rest somewhere in the distance between Mags and Boyd.

“You’re a smart girl, Loretta.” Boyd takes a step forward and when Loretta takes half a step back, bumping into Raylan behind her, he smiles and adds, “Very smart. What do you think happened to your Daddy?”

“Mags sent him on a...a business trip,” she answered, her gaze flicking over to Mags herself. “He’s real busy.”

Boyd shakes his head. “Come on now. That’s what she said. Tell me what you really think happened.”

Loretta is incredibly tense. Raylan can feel the tension in her back and shoulders as they press into his chest. He didn’t back up for her and she still wants to be as far away from Boyd as possible. “S-she hurt him, or ran him off, or--” She doesn’t finish the sentence. “He hasn’t called. He would have called me.”

“So you think he’s what?” Boyd presses.

Raylan can’t stop himself. He puts his hand on Loretta’s shoulder and asks, “I don’t see how this is any less evil.”

Boyd’s eyes flash and he juts his jaw. He doesn’t smile. “You’re right, Raylan.” Boyd turns and says, “Mags, tell the girl what you did.”

Mags keeps her mouth shut tight. She’s got a white-knuckled grip on both arms of her chair, like she’s ready to spring up and flee, but doesn’t because she knows she won’t get far.

“I’m gonna go find your boys, Mags. I’m gonna get me Doyle and he’s gonna give me your grandchildren. They won’t ever get out of this place. They won’t ever want to.” Boyd words are even, but clipped, and he’s glaring at Raylan. 

Raylan wonders if he’s pissed at himself for pushing all this so far. It’s more complex than he likes. It’s become dangerous.

“He went to the law, child,” Mags says all at once, in a bit of a rush compared to her usual lazy way of speaking. “It was a transgression could not go unpunished.”

“What did you do?” Loretta asks, her voice pitching high, distressed. Raylan hasn’t moved his hand from her shoulder.

“The poison was in the glass. He’s dead, honey. My tads dropped him down an empty shaft.” She pauses, then adds, emphatically, “I was always going to take care of you, Loretta.”

Loretta’s shoulders are shaking. “I knew it, I knew it,” she cries, over and over. 

She stops when Boyd speaks again, very soft, almost enticing, “You’re a Harlan girl now, ain’t you, Loretta? You want to get revenge on this woman, who took your daddy from you, took your happy life. I can help you, now. You can have your retribution, but you gotta choose--”

“What’s your price?” Loretta lifts her chin.

“She dies, you stay with me,” Boyd says, he looks at Raylan again, and smiles with sharpened teeth. “You stay with Raylan. He’s got a soft spot for you. He’ll look out for you.”

“You’d bite me. Blind me,” she whispers.

“Only once so you’d stay. You’d be happy and she’d be dead,” Boyd says flatly. “It ain’t a bad existence. Ask them.” He motions to his people in the room.

“Is it, Raylan?” Loretta asks and Boyd snorts at her.

He says, “Maybe not the best time to ask him.”

She turns and the question is still in her eyes. Raylan doesn’t know. He knows that a moment ago he didn’t want it for her. But he’s with Boyd again and for all his challenges and glares and deep, gnawing fear, he longs for the kiss, for its certainty, its clarity and bliss. 

“It’s easy,” he says, honestly. “But...you don’t…” He looks at Mags instead of Loretta, instead of Boyd. He admits, “You don’t want anything--or, you want one thing and that’s all you want, and you do everything for it, because you want it so much. There’s no room for anything else, even yourself. And sometimes you think that’s the best thing in the world, the safest, the most amazing thing. And sometimes, you hate it and you try to stop but--”

“Raylan,” Boyd says. Raylan looks at him. He can’t help himself and there’s a depth of sympathy there that Raylan’s not sure he’s ever seen before. He wonders, so briefly, if it’s sincere, but then it doesn’t matter because he _wants_ Boyd, he wants him so much.

He drops his hand from Loretta’s shoulder. He thinks he made a noise and Boyd is smiling at him. “You thought it through, baby,” Boyd’s murmuring. “How wonderful.”

Loretta is shaking now. Raylan doesn’t move to touch her. She turns to Boyd. “What if I don’t want it? I don’t stay? You’ll let me go?”

“Yes,” Boyd says.

“ _Why?_ ”

“Raylan, tell her.”

Raylan isn’t sure if it was because Raylan wanted it or because he was supposed to choose before and couldn’t. He knew it had to do with him, but the details feel hazy now and he doesn’t know what he wanted anymore anyway. He wants the kiss. He thinks maybe things will be clearer then.

“Raylan?” She’s shaking his arm.

He pulls away. He doesn’t look at her, because he’s looking at Boyd. He has to. “Because of me?” It’s more question than statement. 

Loretta backs away from him, whirls and glares at Boyd. “I-I could come back, kill her anyway.”

“I would find you and take you, child. These are the terms.”

“Don’t--”

Boyd’s knife-sharp nails dig into Mags’ should and she’s silenced, white as a sheet. Loretta stares at her for a long time, then looks back at Boyd, into his eyes. Some pang of fear Raylan can’t parse pulses through him. She says, “I don’t want it. She lives, I go. That’s it.”

Boyd grins. “Decisive. I can appreciate that. Mags lives then. Raylan will report your daddy’s death to the authorities, you’ll go to foster care away from here, and Dickie and Coover Bennett will go to jail for his murder--”

“ _What?_ ” Mags cries out, tearing her arm away from him, drawing blood as she stumbles back.

“The crime can’t go unpunished,” Boyd says calmly, though his eyes are red now as he stares at her blood. “Your boys hid that body. They’ll go to jail for the murder--unless you want to?”

She spits at his feet. “Take your dogs and your whores and that godforsaken child and get the hell out of my house.”

“And you’ll get your money and pull all your fingers and all your people out of my county and my weed business,” Boyd tells her, a reminder, a warning.

“I shook hands with you,” is all she says in response.

 

Hours later, after Kyle’s bundled Carol up and taken her to Cinci to catch a private jet, and the authorities have come and taken both the Bennetts and Loretta away from Harlan, Raylan tells Art he’s driving solo back to Lexington.

He goes to see Boyd.

Boyd meets him in the sanctuary. Everyone is gone and the room is lit only by a few candles near the altar. Boyd doesn’t come near him and Raylan is shaking he wants his kiss so badly.

He’s had a break from thinking, with his insurmountable desire, with the line of law enforcement tasks he’d done, one after another, long into the evening to get the shit with Loretta sorted out. Now, he doesn’t have that.

He starts thinking about all the terror he’s seen in the eyes of women and children that day. Carol’s wiped clean, Mags’ shot through with blood and grief, Loretta’s a shadow under her eyes as she looked at him after--after he’d saved her and told her, shying away from her touch, his heart beating just for Boyd, “I’m lost, honey.”

He doesn’t want this. He needs Boyd to take it away.

“You’ve got questions for me, Raylan,” Boyd says softly. “You know I’ll answer them.”

Raylan shakes his head. “I don’t want answers.”

“Yes, you do. You won’t ask later, come now.” Boyd smiles at him, but doesn't move nearer.

“Why do you want me to know these things?” Raylan blurts, frustrated. “You don’t teach Kyle, not like you do me. Not Devil either. Why show me what you show me? Why draw me into my head if all I’m going to do is doubt you?”

“It’s not about the doubt, baby. Doubt we can fix. We’re going to fix it. It’s about the understanding. I want your eyes open, Raylan.”

“Why? _Why?_ ” 

Raylan doesn’t understand at all. All he feels is this gnawing guilt along with the fear from before. Boyd’s changed him. He wouldn’t have watched that happen. He wouldn’t have been okay with it. It wasn't okay and it’s done and he didn’t stop it. Boyd’s changed him and he doesn’t understand at all.

“I wanted to run away,” he says, the way the words just fall from his mouth reminds him of the way Kyle just had to tell his life story that first night. “You told her you _keep_ me and I knew, I knew it. Loretta wanted to run and I wanted to go with her.”

“But you didn’t,” Boyd says, so soft. He’s not angry. “Tell me why.”

“I said--I told her you’d find us. It was the truth. I saved her.”

“You did, Raylan. She’s safe from me, from you, from Mags. But there was something else.”

Raylan closes his eyes. If it had worked, if they’d been able to run and not be found, “You would never kiss me again.” He feels lightheaded suddenly, and he catches himself on the back of the pew next to him. It’s tacky with old blood. He turns and retches all over the rotting wood.

He wipes his mouth and stands straight again, looking into Boyd’s unyielding eyes. Boyd wants him to ask questions. “Why don’t you change my mind? Like you did Carol’s. She won’t question. I saw that. Not ‘til it’s finished.”

“It’s not about that for you, Raylan. Certainly, I took you because I needed to. You were a lawman at my door. But that’s not why I keep you.”

“Why?”

“You heard the answer to that question when you heard the words made you ask it.”

“You’re lying,” Raylan shouts at him. “You don’t change the people you love beyond recognition, beyond reason, you don’t--”

“I don’t love the way people love, Raylan,” Boyd says, lifting his chin. “I did. And I remember loving you a great deal. I love you now in the way of my kind and my kind is not people.” He takes a few steps closer now, slow and steady. He says, “I show you what I show you for my own reasons and those are not the reasons of people either. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Do you want to ask me anything else?”

“I want you to change my mind,” Raylan says, desperately. “I can’t stand this, I--”

“No,” Boyd replies. “That would break you. You’re too strong, Raylan. Do you want to be driven mad?”

Raylan thinks that he already is, but he’s sure Boyd knows that. “Please, I--”

“Hush,” Boyd croons now, finally stepping into Raylan’s space, pulling him close by the hip, by the neck. His lips are close to Raylan’s ear, his teeth are sharp. “Raylan, I have such plans for you. And yes, teaching you draws you away from me, but I know how to pull you back in, don’t I? You have to trust me. I know, I know, baby. Your mind don’t need to be changed, it’s your heart needs reminding. I love you.”

Raylan knows. He knows now. He sighs into Boyd mouth. “Please,” he says again.

Boyd laughs and it sounds so nice. Boyd kisses him, the sharp kind, and it’s pure bliss.

Raylan doesn’t remember how they came into Boyd’s bed, but he isn’t surprised to be there. Boyd is leaning over him, his skin is flushed pink and warm and his eyes are deep and dark and beautiful. “Poor baby,” he murmurs. “These days were hard for you. Kyle told me some, and I saw it too, my lovely boy.” 

Raylan smiles. He tangles his fingers with Boyd’s. 

“All right, Raylan. You were so good, I’ll tell you,” he says. “You want to forget for a while? The bad things. The hard things. You can do that.”

Raylan nods, eyes wide.

“Forget it, then,” Boyd says and his voice seems to go right inside Raylan’s head, not even bothering to tunnel through his ears. “Forget what you want, what you need from all you heard and what I told you. You remember when you need to, and it won’t bother you at all, huh? ‘Cause it’s not anything and nothing matters to you but me and nothing’s so important to me as you, baby.”

Raylan blinks up at him, suddenly so tired, but so happy, and not at all upset like he was before--he’s forgotten why now, forgotten even the pretty words Boyd just said to him. 

“Kiss me again?” he whispers, because that’s all he wants. 

The only thing that matters.

 

Two days later, Raylan’s back at work and he feels really good. Everything is clear and focused. Everything is right.

Art calls him on his way back from lunch to say Loretta McCready wants to talk with him, refuses to budge from where she’s at until she does.

He drives over to her new foster home, not feeling particularly concerned. He talks to the social worker for a minute, then strolls over to where Loretta’s sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car, her arms crossed across her chest.

“Hey,” he says, kneeling down next to the vehicle’s open window.

She turns to him, surprised by his quiet approach, and nearly burst into tears. “Oh my God, oh my God, Raylan, are you okay?” Her words are hushed, but fierce. She doesn’t want anyone to hear, but she needs to know.

He moves away as she reaches to clutch at his arm. His expression must echo his confusion. “I’m fine, honey,” he says. “Why would you think I ain’t okay?”

She stares at him, open-mouthed. “I just…” she doesn’t finish. “I didn’t think they were gonna let me see you, I--”

“You worried about going in there?” he asks, motioning towards the house behind him.

“Jesus, no,” she says immediately. “Anything’s better than--” She cuts herself off again. She frowns at him.

He thinks she must mean Mags. “Well, you’re out of there now,” is all he can think to say. He’s not really sure what she wants.

She’s looking down at her hands, staring hard at them like she was at his face a moment ago. “Thanks,” she says. 

Raylan’s not sure what it is he’s done. He wrote a report, but some things about the day she left Harlan are hazy, pleasantly so, so he’s not worrying about it. “Sure,” he replies, vaguely.

“No, I mean, thanks f-for not lying to me. About how things are for you, with Boyd. I guess that was a pretty hard thing to do.” She looks up, searching his face.

When he smiles at her uncertainly and asks, unable to recall, “I talked to you about Boyd?” her face falls, crumpling into some terrible combination of pity and fear. He tries to tell her to hush, when she begins to cry again, that he’s all right, but he can’t soothe her, because he can’t bring himself to touch her. 

“Y-you were right,” she sniffs a few minutes later. She looks hard at him, her lips a thin line, her jaw jutted. “I can’t trust you.”

He looks at her steadily and finds himself unmoved. “I suppose not,” he says, unsure as to when he would have said such a thing to her. 

Her lip quivers again, but she stills it in a moment, heaves a sigh and says, her expression having gone sad, “You really are lost, Raylan. I wish...I wish I knew how to save you, like you saved me.”

He blinks and smiles again at her. “Honey, don’t worry. I really am fine.”

She shakes her head, but says, a little wetly, “Okay,” and he opens the door for her to climb out.

She doesn’t look back as she walks into the house.

Raylan climbs into his car and drives off, letting it fall away behind him like the road beneath his wheels. He’s looking forward to moving through the week, then the next one, and then to a weekend in Harlan.

Because that’s the only thing that matters.


End file.
